Crazy legs: Breakdancer Jay Cambay

It takes a while to register the fact that the throbbing beats and heavy rapping of hiphop music is echoing in the halls of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The source is a rehearsal studio down in the basement, where a few dozen students are stretching, practicing, and milling around a wiry young man in a loose T-shirt, baggy pants and a baseball cap.

There are about 40 students, many of them teenage girls, with a handful of boys, and a few adventurous middle-aged ladies braving a sea of youthful energy. Several students are still wearing ballet shoes from a previous ballet class at the CCP. All of them are looking to the front end of the room, where the guy in the cap is standing alone with his eyes closed, thinking of the next sequence of steps.

The man is Jay Cambay, and he’s rehearsing his students for the performance at the end of their two-month workshop. After a pause, he goes through a succession of a few quick steps, then breaks out into a smile and calls the attention of his students.

"Here’s what we’re going to do," he announces, demonstrating a rapid array of spins, leaps, and flailing limbs. He instructs some of the more advanced students to do handstands, flying kicks, and flips. His charges, surprisingly, take it all in stride. They pull off the newest revisions to their performance with only a few errors.

Those errors are enough, though, and he critiques and practices his dancers with the precision of a military drillmaster. Then he cracks a joke, and his students laugh and relax. While Jay makes sure that the lessons are fun, he makes it evident that he is also very serious about what he teaches.

This continues for about an hour and a half, then he gives the students a few parting reminders before dismissing them. "Attitude," he tells them. "You’ve got to project attitude. Get used to wearing big pants and sneakers. Bring those caps next week." For a class full of mostly ballet-trained dancers accustomed to tight leggings and ballet shoes, it’s another lesson they have to learn.

In the interview afterwards, he is still flushed, in a bit of a daze. "It’s a dancing high," he explains. "Dancing is a very emotional exercise–I really lose myself in the music while I’m doing it. When you watch me dancing, you’re watching me transform."

Thirty year-old Jay Cambay has devoted most of his life to this tranformation. He started breakdancing (or "breaking") when he was nine. "I saw the movie Flashdance with an aunt. There was a scene in the film where there were a bunch of guys who were breaking in the street, and I kept pestering my aunt, ‘Tita, what’s that? How do they do that?’ It was then I realized what I wanted to do."

He practiced by watching music videos, by watching his older brothers. It came to a point that he was picking up the newest maneuvers as fast as–sometime faster than–his siblings, and his love for B-boying blossomed into a driving passion.

But it wasn’t smooth sailing when he was starting out. "I had two left feet," he recalls ruefully. "I remember trying to pull off a move called a dolphin dive, and I ended up falling on my face. When my mom asked about my split lip, I just said I had tripped and fallen."

All his hard work and bodily injuries have paid off. Eventually, he formed Battlecrew, working and training with his peers to form an official Philippine team for international battles. In his long and rich career as B-boyer, he has joined several international competitions as a soloist.

He earned accolades in theAsian Battle 2003 in Hong Kong, and in the World International Hiphop Competition in Los Angeles last year. Although he does not make it to all the international competitions (without sponsors, he pays for his travel to and participation in these battles himself), Jay is ranked among the best in the world, consistently finishing at the top in world and regional battles. Many people have noticed the energetic young man, and bestowed on him the name "Crazy Legs of Asia." It’s a great honor for Jay, as Crazy Legs is one of the original practitioners of the art from New York in the early 80s, a name venerated by B-boyers the world over.

During that period, breakdancing and the hiphop culture were on the rise. The phenomenon of breakdancing spun into the scene back in the early to mid-80s. Heavily influenced by the Afro-Brazilian dance/martial art capoeira, breakdancing is a form of aggressive, acrobatic dancing developed in New York that often involves two opponents (called "B-boys") or opposing groups ("crews") who "battle." The combatants display their mastery of the art by trying to outdo the other in making the more difficult, complicated moves. While the disciplines of capoeira and breakdancing have taken sharply divergent roads since then, the spirit of competition is still very much there.

"You can call it a ‘full-contact dance’," Jay says. "You win by doing something your opponent can’t. This is why everyone is always pushing the limits, why it keeps changing. It’s competitive, but at the same time it’s all about unity. After the battle, no one is hurt, and you’re supposed to respect your opponent."

He goes on to explain that one of the reasons that breakdancing was developed was to give rival street gangs in New York an alternative to violence. In general, breakdancing has evolved into a genre that espouses solidarity, even among rivals.

Now, the living, flowing force of breaking and B-boying has taken root all over the world. From New York and Los Angeles, the headspinning, handsliding art has spread to countries like Germany, Hungary, France, Korea, the United Kingdom, and Japan. International battles have turned into huge productions with lots of publicity.

In the Philippines, it’s also gaining momentum. There are crews in cities like Marikina and Taguig, and even in provinces like Cebu and Davao. But here, where they lack a large support base and big corporate sponsorships, the scene is underground. Without the sponsors and widespread interest found in other countries, local crews hold their own events, make their own publicity.

"We have talent, yes, and skilled crews, but we don’t have enough support," according to Jay. "Our dancers make do, everything is sariling sikap. But the local scene is getting there. We drumming up a lot of interest."

In teaching another generation of dancers, Jay assures that breakdancing in the country will not only survive, but flourish. Even with the many hurdles along the way, he perseveres in pushing his students to their limits: "Breaking is supposed to be challenging. You encourage your students, and you challenge them. It’s supposed to be about doing something that you previously couldn’t do. Too many of the teachers are content with passing on some moves they saw on MTV, or just letting their students in on the basics. The whole point of breaking is style and creativity, so we shouldn’t stick to the same old things. It’s not simply a dance, it’s self-expression. When you dance, you’re also telling people who you are, where you’re from, what you can do."

He explains that this self-expression extends to the B-boy dancing not only for himself, but for his crew, or his neighborhood, city or country. "Represent" is a term often used in hiphop and B-boying, and it is one of the main thrusts of the movement.

These days, Jay represents and does his special brand of instruction in places like Gold’s Gym and in training Filipino representatives in international competitions. "Because now no one wants to battle with me, I mostly stick to teaching and judging in battles," he laughs. "I’m starting to miss it." But even when he’s off the floor, he’s still working on the creative side of dancing.

And the creativity is just brimming over in the seasoned B-boyer. "Wouldn’t it be cool, for example, if we could combine some capoeira moves with tinikling? Think about it. The dancers would have to time their flips and handstands with the opening and closing of the bamboo poles," he muses. Jay pauses, visualizing and savoring the possibilities.

How long does he intend to do this? He starts, and smiles. "As long as I can stand," he promises. "It’s my first love, I can’t think of anything else I would rather do."

When the interview ends, he says he has to go home early, to get some rest for another long day of lessons the next day. Tomorrow, he will begin again.

When the hiphop music starts up in that room in the CCP basement, he’ll be there again, eyes closed, dreaming of the next possibilities, thinking of how to push his body, his students and his art to ever newer heights.

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Jay is part of a group organizing WAVE 89.1’s street and breakdancing competition, Battlerock 2005. Those interested in paticipating can log on at http://www.wave891.fm/girbaud/battlerock.html